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14 September 2018

INTERVIEW: Josiah Webb of Magic Shoppe.

Photo by Alex Ioannou

Magic Shoppe identify
their music as “hypnotic reverb rock”. The band name is apt: Magic Shoppe have
consistently offered up their own magical concoction of gazey, dark and heavy
psychedelia on four EPs and three full-length albums across an eight-year
period, all with an excellence that only increases with time. At the core of
Magic Shoppe is Josiah Webb, who writes the material and engineers, sings
and plays on the recordings, with other project members contributing here and
there and filling out the live line up. These participants are Stevie Moonboots
on bass, Dave Mulvaney on drums, and Richie Gibson on guitar, with Josiah helming
on guitar and vocals in the live setting. Stevie and Dave are both members of
Vancouver’s The Orange Kyte
while Richie is guitarist in B-17
and co-owner of Toronto’s Optical
Sounds label.

Josiah, who lives in Boston, Massachusetts, has
graciously taken time out from the flurry of activity that attends an LP
release—read about In Parallel
below—to answer our questions.

How
and when was the band formed?

In the winter of 2007…in the frozen tundra of
upstate New York. Things started rolling for Magic Shoppe the night I met Rob and
Richie Gibson from the Optical
Sounds label. Some Optical Sounds bands came down from Toronto to play a
show at a local venue around the corner from my apartment at the time. We all
hung out after the show until the sun came up. I asked Rob and Richie if they’d
be into putting out some recordings I was working on as an EP. Without even
listening to it, they agreed. After that night, I realized I needed to have an
actual band, so I recruited some friends and the rest is history, I guess.

Can
you tell us what the band has been working on and what you've got forthcoming
in the near future (new releases, tour, etc.)?

Our latest full length In
Parallel was officially released on Little
Cloud Records (which I co-own with Mike and Joe Nesbitt) in North America
and Cardinal Fuzz in the EU/UK on August 31st, 2018. This record is a lot more rock
’n’ roll than our other records. It also has a ton more reverb, fuzz and delay
on it. I’m down with how it turned out.

In support of this record, Magic Shoppe is touring
Europe, Scandinavia and the UK for the entire month of October (look here for details).

Defining
one's sound by genre can be tiresome, but do you feel that the band identifies
closely with any genre?

I think we’re a decent mix of simple rock ’n’ roll
and shoegaze, with maybe a little bit of modern psych.

What
artists (musicians or otherwise) have most influenced your work?

I grew up as a skate boarder in the US. My friends
and I got rad on half-pipes while blasting AC/DC (Bon Scott era), My Bloody
Valentine, The Kinks, The Standells, Dinosaur Jr., Ride, Mercury Rev and The
Flaming Lips (their early stuff). I think a lot of those bands inevitably show
up as clear influences on our records. Right before the recording of In
Parallel, I got my hands on a sweet 1967 Fender Jaguar and I ended up going a
bit bonkers with the tremolo arm on the In Parallel recordings.

What
do you think of modern shoegaze/dream pop/psychedelia artists, any favorites?

What
is the most important piece of gear for your sound? Any particular
guitars/pedals/amps that you prefer?

I always change my pedalboard around, but my amp
has always been a seventies Silver Face Fender Twin Reverb. I dislike the sixties
Fender Blackface Twin Reverbs (no master volume). Most Fender Twin Reverb nerds
swear by the Blackface single volume Twin Reverb. They seem to like it due to
the way it drives the pre-amp tubes as you increase the single volume knob,
which is exactly why I hate it. I don’t want my amp to color my sound in any
fucking capacity. That’s what my pedalboard is for.

Some guitar pedals I swear by…

I’ll always have a Death By Audio Fuzz War and a
Caroline Guitar Company Kilobyte delay pedal on my board. The Fuzz War is a
widely used staple fuzz pedal and the Kilobyte delay is like many other lo-fi
delay effects, but it has a unique feature that I could never live without. It
has a button to step on that throws the delay feedback into total oscillation
until you release the button. I can step on a button on the pedal—and it just
goes completely insane.

What
is your process for recording your music? What gear and/or software do you use?
What would you recommend for others?

I’ve never paid a studio or an engineer to record
Magic Shoppe records. I do everything myself. The first song tracked for In Parallel was “(un)Sound Mind”. That track was almost completely
done before our EU/UK tour in 2017. When I got back from that tour, I just
started tracking everything else pretty much all at once. Aside from the Velvet
Underground “Heroin” cover and “(un)Sound Mind”, I had no idea what was going
to be on this record. I just poured a scotch, had a seat and pressed record.

I’m a software and plug-ins guy. I have a simple
process and some sidechain compression software that I’m comfortable with.
Also, real tape is unbelievably expensive. I own a shitty Radio Shack mic, an
SM-58, a D-112, and two super basic MXL cardioid mics.

I use the Glyn Johns method for miking drums (four
mics). My drum kit is a sixties red sparkle four-piece Japanese stencil kit.
It’s not a high-end kit by any stretch of the imagination, but I compensate by
using high end vintage heads on it and I tune all the drums super open. I
engineer, mix and master all the Magic Shoppe records with inexpensive gear I
already own.

How
do you feel about the state of the music industry today? There is no doubt a
massive change underway. How do you see it and do you feel it’s positive at
all?

I think it’s really wide open. There’s a lot of
publicly available services you can use to get your stuff out there. There’s
Bandcamp, social media, Spotify, iTunes, etc. Just start googling how to do
stuff. You’ll inevitably find lots of services you can hook into and use.

Previously a record label was a lot like a pimp,
but the days of record company pimps and hookers are long fucking gone. Now you
can be both the pimp and the hooker—it’s fantastic.

When
it comes to label releases versus DIY/Bandcamp and the like, what is your
stance, if any?

I don’t think it matters. Twin brothers Mike and
Joe Nesbitt and I founded our own record label (Little Cloud Records) to release Magic
Shoppe records, as well as a few records by other bands we know and like. It
took a bit of initial credit card debt to get things going, but we’re doing
pretty well now.

Bandcamp is great. They make it really easy for
bands to not only make money, but also to be found via networking.

Before Mike, Joe and I started Little Cloud
Records, I kept seeing Mike buying tons of Magic Shoppe records on Bandcamp and
I was like, “Who the fuck is this guy?” I checked out the Bandcamp list of
music he’s supported/purchased (it’s public) and it was amazing how much good
music he bought that I’d never even heard of. In turn, I ended up buying that
same music, and those bands got my money and support.

Do
you prefer vinyl, CD, cassette tape or MP3 format when listening to music? Do
you have any strong feelings toward any of them?

Digital streaming or vinyl. It depends on where I
am. If it’s a band I’ve never heard before, I prefer vinyl. I like to hold a
record jacket and look at the artwork and all that. You can do some pretty
clever shit with a vinyl record product. Weird shit with center labels, colored
vinyl, marbling, etc. It can be a mind-blowing experience to be looking at all
that while listening to the music. I’m not a fan of CDs.

What
is your philosophy (on life), if any, that you live by?

I think I’ve managed to make a few semi-intelligent
decisions and I’ve also had a bit of luck/chance that I can clearly identify as
a starting point for a lot of great things that have happened to me in my life.

I don’t think a person can completely control
their own destiny. There are definitely a lot of things that a person can
control, but there’s a huge universe out there and a lot of people also doing
their own thing. Collisions will happen, both good and bad. I just try to enjoy
the ride.